Toyota Hearings Begin Today
The House Energy and Commerce Committee kicks off the week’s Toyota-related festivities on Capitol Hill today, with the first round of hearings scheduled for 11 am Eastern. Testifying will be Toyota Motor America’s Jim Lentz, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Southern Illinois professor and ABC’s ghost hunter David Gilbert, Safety Research and Strategy’s Sean Kane, as well Eddie and Rhonda Smith, who reportedly experienced uncontrollable sudden acceleratio n in a Lexus ES350. The E&C Committee has a live webcast available here, or you can watch on C-Span 3. The Detroit News’s David Shepardson is live-tweeting from the press events on the Hill leading up to the hearing.
Tomorrow is the main event, when CEO Akio Toyoda appears before the House Oversight Committee along with TMA President Yoshimi Inaba.
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I'm really curious as to how the nice lady was able to shift into neutral and reverse at 100 mph without either stopping (which she was eventually able to, although she insists it was not because of shifting into neutral) or leaving her transmission on the freeway. I'm also mystified by Kane's ability to simply rule out driver error.
Hmmmm.....US Gov't owns 2 out of the 3 US based auto companies along with the UAW having ownership as well. Hmmmm.....Unions are documented as being the highest providers of campaign funds in the USA over the past decade. Hmmmm.....USA gov't representatives (and now our President) are dominated by lawyers as a prior profession. Hmmmm.....USA media shares few actual facts, data or critical analysis. Focuses on crisis sensationalism to drive viewership.
One of the congresscritters just dropped a bomb. Evidently, she claims that Toyota's lawyers just released a stateemnt that the auto tech proffy's work is a result of "sabotage", and only "sabotage" could lead to the result he got. The poor proffy got a bit flustered.
John Dingell, the congressman representing the UAW, and whose wife is a Government Motors executive working for the General Motors subsidiary, is currently interrogating Lentz. It's pretty funny! Dingell is a treasure. I like this guy, and his motivations are always clear and understandable. Rough, but he's open about it. Lentz just said Toyota would be providing 100 black box recorders to the US by April, so that's news. Lentz also played the sympathy card, about his brother dying in a car accident, and started choking up. There is no crying in the car business. This guy is NOT a car guy.